Sunday, September 16, 2018

Office 365 Mobile Application Management basics

When you look at a licensed user in Office 365 you will see sections like this:

You’ll see there are no device settings as yet.

If a user now downloads and installs the Outlook app on their phone.

and then logs into it

they will be able to receive the emails as expected.

However, they will also see that the organization is protecting their device.

and thus, they will require a PIN for the Outlook application.

They can also download the OneDrive app and connect to their OneDrive for Business.

If they however use GMail to access their emails they will again see the prompt above letting them know that Office 365 will be controlling part of this account.

The user will see the things that will be possible via remote management.

The users account can be connected via most mail clients using their login and password.

and they will be able to see their emails.

The same thing applies if they use the native mail client that comes with the device. That account will need to be put under management before it can be used as shown above.

Once done so, the user can read their emails.

Now that a user has configured their device for an Office 365 service you will see an additional option in the list of items for their account in the administration center – Device Settings.

This item is Device Settings and you should see the devices they have configured.

If you select Device Settings you should see all the devices the user has configured, as shown above. You will notice that these devices are “App managed”, which basically means just the software on the device is managed, not the operating system or the anything else on the device.

You can select the device and then select Remove company data, however, because the device is only “App managed” you’ll see that you can’t wipe the whole the device.

if you continue with the Remove company data option, you see the above confirmation screen.

If you then select Confirm you will see the above confirmation that data removal from the device has commenced.

If you wish to remove the OneDrive data as well it is best practice to go into the OneDrive settings and Initiate a sign out as shown above.

You’ll then receive confirmation that this sign process has commenced.

This basic version of device management is available across all Office 365 plans, however if you are looking for more powerful management, with full device management, then you need to consider using Intune and actually enrolling the devices which I’ll cover in an upcoming update.